Category: Poetry

Black winds chase across the manmade
canyons as Carter leaves the bus station.
Towering structures hover all around him,
as snow comes billowing down the shafts
of darkness. While on street level, designer
dream worlds in which stylishly dressed
mannequins play act a high-style life of eye
popping riches, appear in storefront windows
everywhere, as shadow shapes bundle past
them from every direction, paying them no
attention, going every which way in a flurry
of commotion.
The big city, Carter shivers. He has to find
some work here. Nothing going on in his
hometown since they closed the plant down
and shipped the whole kit and caboodle to
Mexico, leaving everyone, jobless, and hopeless.
It was scary, this giant city, where everything
was too big and everyone was in a hurry.
“You can’t let life bring you down!” The
Preacher had told the congregation. “You
can’t let fear hold you down! You have to
move on! The Hebrews were afraid to go on.
They were afraid of the desert! They were
afraid of the danger! They were afraid of the
unfamiliar! But they couldn’t go back to Egypt
and despair. Moses made them go on. Moses
said ‘Trust in God!’ So they followed him.
And God parted the sea for them!”
There were beggars everywhere, families dressed
in rags shuffling through the cold, their faces filled
with fear. There were drunks, and what looked like
dead bodies huddled up in doorways and shady
looking characters watching him from alleys.
Carter had to get inside somewhere, get out of
the blizzard. He had to get his bearings, get his
head together. He slipped in a diner and sat at the
counter. Everyone looked like sleepwalkers. The
counter seemed crowded with ghosts and phantoms.
“Coffee” he told the waitress who looked at him
askance like the only reason he was there was to
get in her hair.
“Trust in God and the seas will open!” The preacher
said. Well there was no going back to Egypt, Carter
thought, that was for sure. There was nothing there
anymore. That door was closed, the lock changed,
the bridge to it burned. God better part that sea soon
for him, Carter knew, or he’d drown in this big city
with the rest of them.

Razor sliced clean – his too-quick smile
was your bad dream.
At night, in the Hood, when the street lights
glowed, blood flowed. Sometimes you
could hear the screams.
Razor was a friend of mine
He would slice you anytime
For nickel or a dime
Fifty cents for overtime
Stop the poem! This next stanza is a
disclaimer! I never knew anyone named
Razor! Or any other psychopath who
would steal, cheat, murder for profit
or pleasure! I’m making this up!
(Can’t get bumped off or sued by a whacko!)
OK, I grew up in a slum. But I moved on.
I saw nothing, heard nothing, remember
nothing, know nothing.
I keep company, now, with the cream of
society: bankers, brokers, politicians,
the titans of industry and commerce.
Maybe I shouldn’t write about them either?

Summer heat, the town asleep,
I walk empty streets in the
hallowed light of a full moon
night. Above me, the stars sparkle
like gems in the heavens.
All around me a jubilee is celebrated
by the crickets as they perform their
nocturnal rhapsody – to accompany
the lullaby the hushed wind whispers
through the leaves of the trees which
canopy the winding lanes which
wander up and down the hills and
dales of our small town.
Come the dawn is there a reason to
go on? I wonder.
The days shall go on: full moon,
new moon, Autumn, Winter, Spring,
Summer again, world without end.
Round and round the planet circles
the sun, time passes on, life moves
along.
Tomorrow morning the Plant shuts
down. Our lives shut down and soon
comes a ghost town.

It doesn’t take a lightning bolt or
cosmic jolt to spark the dark side
of womankind and change an angel
to a she-devil and transform that shy
child who never thought to be wild
into a wanton adventuress eager to
exchange those gentle pastels for a
firey red dress.
It doesn’t take a potent concoction
from a witches caldron, a love potion
or occult incantation, a voodoo spell
or the old “candy is dandy but liquor
is quicker” mantra to unveil the
feminine mystique and send it
dancing in a midnight dress through
an ecstacy of black magic madness.
It doesn’t take sorcery, but whispered
sweet nothings and a loving touch.

In my cheap room, lit by a TV screen,
after I climb five flights, each night,
up a stairway to nowhere, I sit and
stare at Hollywood daydreams, which
feature movie queens, heros and villans,
happy endings. Each one showing, that
in the USA, the bad guys lose, truth wills
out, the righteous win — which keeps us
going. It’s how we survive these hard
times, as we sip our beers and eat our
popcorn in a world that’s broken.
Even in this dead town where misery
abounds, and jobs can’t be found, and
what was up crashed down, like so many
Humpty Dumptys who can’t be put back
together again, not even by our constitution,
nor our institutions, or our business leaders,
rabbis, priests and preachers, nor our
politicians, who all have other eggs to break
and fry, as they scramble those happy
endings for their busy lives. Which have
nothing to do with our sorry stories, because
they don’t have to live them. They don’t
even have to watch them. They can select
another station. They inhabit another nation.